Advertisers, television networks, content providers and like entities often benefit from analytics concerning the size, demographic composition, and the like of a viewing audience that consumes audio, video and like programs. For example, information concerning the total time a particular viewer or set of viewers watched a program or watched an advertisement within a program are often desired.
The above referenced analytics can be difficult to ascertain for recorded programs viewed at later unspecified times by viewers. For example, digital video recorders (DVR), personal video recorders (PVR), set top boxes (STB), computers, smartphones, and like devices and equipment that may be located at the consumer's site permit audio and video content to be downloaded, streamed, recorded, or the like and then replayed at a later time in accordance with the desires of the consumer. Recording devices also include network digital video recorders (nDVR), network personal video recorders (nPVR), remote storage digital video recorder (rs-DVR), and like equipment that are network-based digital video recorders that may be stored or located on the cloud at a server location or at a content provider's location rather than at the consumer's private location or home.
The above referenced devices have effectively increased the consumer's ability to time shift the consumption of programs (i.e., to record, download, or stream a program and ultimately consume the program or parts thereof at a later time that best suits the consumer). This ability to time shift has also provided the consumer with enhanced power to consume only selected portions of programs by, for example, skipping or fast-forwarding through portions of recorded content, and also to consume parts of a program multiple times via use of rewinding or the like.
For purposes of tracking the total minutes or time that a recorded or stored program was watched or that advertisements within such a program were watched, it is necessary to determine which sections of the program were viewed during a play or playback action as compared to other so-called trick play actions, such as fast-forward, rewind, and pause.